If I was Pope, what would my Pope-Name be?

April 19th 2005, a day that I will never forget. Today is the day that the new Pope was elected. The man formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI has been appointed Pope and head of the Catholic Church, and he is looking pretty good for a 78 year old German man, but as I told my cynical youth tonight, “German’s live forever”…

Speaking of looking good for an older person….sorry I’m about to be shallow and weird… but I just finished watching Meet the Fockers, and Blythe Danner (who plays Gaylord Focker’s mother in law and who consequently is the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow, who I love) is very attractive for a women who is old enough to by my grandmother…..hopefully you aren’t all to weirded out by that statement. I don’t mean this in a degrading or sexually weird way, I just mean she has aged noticeably well, and I appreciate beauty wherever I see it, whether it is in human form, or in any other form.

Enough with that.

Today in preparation for my sermon on the Sabbath, I was going over a familiar passage of scripture. We all know about the story in Genesis where we learn about the Creation of the earth right? If you don’t hear it is, well from the sixth day on. Genesis 1:24-31.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.

So, on the sixth day, it is clear according to the text that God created humanity. And he didn’t just create a man, but it say’s male and female he created them, which does more then imply that by the end of God’s time creating things he had created both a male and a female, which actually does imply that he created both Adam and Eve. It also say’s that he blessed them, encouraged them to create offspring and gave them dominion over everything. He also said it was good, in fact very good, and then the day ended.

Here’s where it either gets confusing or I lose my mind. The entire next passage of scripture, Genesis chapter 2, seems to go back in time and explain to us exactly how Adam and Eve personally came about, and all the stuff that happened in between. Here read for yourself….

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [a] from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Adam and Eve
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth [b] and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth [c] and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams [d] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin [f] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. [g] 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam [h] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [i] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman, [k] '
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Now I know this is getting long but bear with me. If we hold to the idea that the six days of creation are literal, then we must believe that everything that occurred in Chapter 2 of Genesis which you just read occurred in one 24 hour period. This means that within 24 hours,
1. Adam was created.
2. He was put in the Garden of Eden, which was planted at some other undisclosed time.
3. God observed that Adam would benefit from having someone to help him.
4. God began creating all the animals in the world, land mammals, birds, amphibians and whatever else, but every single living creature on the earth, and God showed them to Adam so that Adam could name them.
5. Adam named every animal.
6. After the animal naming, God realized that none of these were good enough to give Adam what he needed.
7. God knocks Adam out cold and performs a surgery to take one of his ribs.
8. God creates the lovely species of Women from Adam’s lone rib.
9. Then he presents this women to Adam, and they have some romantic wedding ceremony.

Now, I am not saying that this could not be done in one day. I am not denying God’s capabilities, in that I believe he is powerful enough to accomplish this. But in holding to this idea that creation was this clean event that happened in six 24 hour periods of time seems ludicrous to me considering all that was done on day six. I don’t believe that if God sat me down and paraded all the animals in the world in front of me, that I could name them all in 24 hours, let alone have all the other stuff happen to me. I know God can do anything, but by holding so fast to this literal reading of Genesis, we are putting a time limit on things, a human time limit, which includes the work and involvement of humans, like me, like you. If the passage would’ve said, God made man, made the animals and named them, realized Adam needed something better and made her, that would be more agreeable, because God is all powerful, and God is able to work in the bounds of time and space he is not limited by that, but humans are. Then if you were to argue that Adam and Eve weren’t limited by time and space, because of the fall hadn’t occurred yet, then it blows the literal six days theory out of the water. Not to mention the idea that When Adam and Eve had Seth, their third born son, Adam was 130 years old. I’ll give them 25 years for the Cain and Abel thing, but what was Adam doing for those unaccounted for 105 years. It makes sense to think that he was living in the Garden naming Animals and communing with God for some of that time, and for some time after that he was living happily with Eve and God. Perhaps none of this matters, but as I read through it today it was like I experienced a physical paradigm shift, as if some alarms went off in my head that said, this doesn’t totally add up, but that’s ok, it doesn’t make me believe that God created the world and everything in it any less, it just means that the story of the creation of the world just became a heck of a lot more relational and real to me. If you disagree with me, and think I am a heretic, or were there and really know what happened and you care to debate or discuss with me my ideas, I would love to, I am open to your ideas and thoughts on the subject as I hope and pray you are with my ideas and heart ponderings.

I am sorry about this, but it’s not quite finished. I know this is long, but I want to give you this next section from Donald Miller’s book “Searching for God knows What”, I realize it will only make this longer, but I feel it important, and if you don’t want to read it so be it, but this is my blog and I will do whatever I want damn it! Also if you like what he say’s in the following direct quote I recommend you read his books. He is great.

Ok, I started writing it out, got about a quarter done and realized this is way too long, and I am tired of typing and being awake in general. My advice to you, buy or borrow the book and ready pages 63-65 directly after re-reading this epic blog.

Ok, I will leave you with that, Song of the day is “Open Skies” by David Crowder Band. I have enjoyed the music of the Chow, ever since I saw him open for Bebo Norman in Kentucky, and I bought this cd of his “Illuminate” a few months ago whilst on a trip to Edmonton, and I listened to it once and then filed it away, I listened to it today whilst reading scripture and praying. It is pretty phenomenal actually, though it might be more of a headphones album then a driving album. The song itself “Open Skies” is pretty amazing. It talks about all creationg praising God, it’s pretty cool, if you have the means and or the desire, you should listen to it, maybe even whilst reading some Donald Miller, you can’t go wrong with either of those things.

I love you all very much, Matt Russell, I need to chat with you, so when you are back in internet connectivity zone, let me know, have a great day, pray for me this weekend, I am preaching and I feel stumped right now. Peace from the Shaolin, an early supporter of Pope Benedict XVI….hmmm….if I was pope, what would my name be?